The Diatribe

From: Josh Bembenek (jbembe@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Aug 03 2003 - 02:09:46 EDT

  • Next message: Michael Spence: "Re: loose ends"

    More Discussion with Glenn:

    ">
    >Your endless diatribe is quite intolerable at this point to me.

    Then I would suggest deleting messages with my name on them. You will feel
    better. But I am very disappointed that you won't show me how ID works."

    You should be proud of me, I even looked up the word diatribe to ensure that
    it had exactly the meaning and would create the effect I wanted. Something
    about your response is quite familiar, though. Maybe it was that I said the
    exact same to you, it will be hard to continue our conversation if both of
    us delete all email from each other.

    "Which of the sequences:

    woxianzhegetuyiyang
    xianwotuyiyangzhege
    amhuinnsuidhe
    dallenbaloch
    thaancumorachthaancatbeag
    ciamarathasibh

    is designed? For pete's sake Or even peat's sake, ID claims to have a means
    of detecting design, but NO ONE will try my test. I have offered this test
    for years with absolutely no ID person or anyone for that matter taking it.
    After years of trying this, I suspect I am being bamboozled when ID folks
    say they have a means of detecting design. C'mon Josh, show me. Prove ID is
    more than bananas."

    Glenn, the best I can say is that yes, everything your talking about is
    bananas. However, ID in the real world, advocated by Dembski et al, is not
    bananas (unless you think bananas means credible hypothesis useful in
    describing natural and perhaps unnatural phenomena.)

    The problem with your errant thinking has to do with specification. I don't
    care one bit about how many clever ways you can encode messages, we've been
    over all of this before on this listserve several months ago at great
    exhaustive length. Specification is no issue at all in biology, have you
    ever heard of a consensus sequence, or an amino acid motif? Try this, tell
    me whether the following is specified:

    Hckaglgr

    If you need a decoder, go to the blast page for short amino acid sequences
    found here:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/Blast.cgi?CMD=Web&LAYOUT=TwoWindows&AUTO_FORMAT=Semiauto&ALIGNMENTS=50&ALIGNMENT_VIEW=Pairwise&CLIENT=web&DATABASE=nr&DESCRIPTIONS=100&ENTREZ_QUERY=%28none%29&EXPECT=20000&FORMAT_OBJECT=Alignment&FORMAT_TYPE=HTML&GAPCOSTS=9+1&I_THRESH=0.005&MATRIX_NAME=PAM30&NCBI_GI=on&PAGE=Proteins&PROGRAM=blastp&SERVICE=plain&SET_DEFAULTS.x=24&SET_DEFAULTS.y=10&SHOW_OVERVIEW=on&WORD_SIZE=2&END_OF_HTTPGET=Yes&SHOW_LINKOUT=yes&GET_SEQUENCE=yes

    and enter the above sequence. Hit the Blast button on the first page, and
    then hit the Format button on the second page. Your formatted results will
    detect every Cdc14 homologue currently known plus some highly similar PTEN
    family members. This sequence is clearly recognized as the active site
    consensus sequence of Cdc14. This is specification and we do not need to
    debate whether this sequence is specified or not: when this sequence is
    found, it would be ridiculous to argue that the protein does not function as
    a dual-specificity protein phosphatase. Indeed, dual-specificity protein
    phosphatases are in fact defined in part by this specification. If you want
    more information, we have also discussed this issue at length on this email
    forum, and can be found at:

    http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Apologetics/NoFreeLunchReview.html

    The question isn't whether targets are specified, or whether arrows have hit
    a certain mark. The real issue is how big exactly is the bulls eye? The
    real issue has to do with protein function, not the gobbledygook language
    you entertain yourself with. The problem you have is that you are
    discussing these issues on a purely philosophical, theological, and
    mathematical (and gobbledygook) level. Once details of protein function are
    clarified, all of this discussion will dissolve because the issue will be
    settled. That's why I post articles on allosteric interactions within
    proteins, Hsp90, and genome-wide deletion analysis papers. This is where
    the real action is. ID and theistic evolution debate because this issue is
    unsolved and sidelines observers create a big fuss trying to interpret the
    incomplete data set and conclusively demonstrate that it best supports their
    general Worldview position before it's best to do so. The safest thing to
    do now is place your wager and await affirmation. When a general solution
    is better understood, all this debate will be put to rest because we will
    know how proteins have been specified and what degree of CSI they actually
    contain.

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